Forum:Ordering Sections of Articles
We recently had the beginnings of a discussion on the format to be observed for ordering sections of articles whose subjects appear in many stories. Three contenders for the format emerged: alphabetical organization by series (with various X-Time sections usually grouped as a subsection of "Article X in the Crosstime Series"); descending order of resemblance to the subject in OTL, a format piloted in Joseph Stalin and thoroughly discussed on his talk page; and in descending order of substantive content/relevance to the stories each section writes about. Using the example of Babe Ruth, under the first format he'd have "Batboy," BtB, Worldwar, HTGB, and DSA, which is the order at time of this writing. Under the second format he'd have "Batboy," BtB, DSA, HTGB, and Worldwar. Under the third he'd have HTGB (a whole life story available), "Batboy" (he shows up for a second or two) and we'd then have to come up with a tiebreaker among BtB, DSA, and Worldwar ("Oh, yes," said a character, "Babe Ruth existed;" though as TR points out, in DSA George Herman may not have been Babe Ruth at all. I'd suggest the astronomical improbability of that coincidence makes it more likely he simply didn't use his full name, as Henry Louis Gehrig dropped Henry and just went by Lou, but that's neither here nor there.) I'd suggest alphabetical order as the tiebreaker. Alphabetical order is currently in use for most of our non-character articles, though it's imperfectly enforced; see for instance Germany. Descending order of resemblance to OTL is currently in use for most of our articles on historical figures, which seems to be defined mostly as PODs arranged from late to early. (For instance, Adolf Hitler#Adolf Hitler in Worldwar currently precedes Adolf Hitler#Adolf Hitler in The War That Came Early, though I'd humbly submit that starting the war in Czechoslovakia rather than Poland is less dramatic a difference than starting the war then calling it off on account of extraterrestrial invasion. However, it TWTPE does have the earlier POD.) If this is what we're going with, we should be clear that date of POD is the definition, not the more subjective "This doesn't remind me of OTL as much as the other story." Descending order of relevance to a story is not in use but I thought it would be worthwhile to bring into this discussion. It's most user-friendly to a hypothetical user who's looking for story specific information. Using Babe Ruth again, I dare suggest that article will be searched by people who are interested in HTGB far, far more often than by people who read Earl Warren's one-liner to Yeager and say "Oh boy! He said Babe Ruth! I wonder how the geeks on Turtlewiki address that." I think perhaps George Herman would be the second-most frequent reason to look up Ruth, yet at present both sections follow a long string of one-sentence sections about how characters made irrelevant offhand references to him. Whatever we decide (alphabetical, POD, subjective measure of similarity to OTL, descending order of relevance, or another, as-yet unproposed standard) we ought to make it a rule for all articles; one standard for characters and another for non-characters bespeaks an arbitrary distinction without a difference, and it could confuse or annoy users used to sections being arranged in a certain way. In practice I realize this means we'll impose this rule on new articles and leave the many hundreds of existing articles as they are until we happen to have some independent reason to edit each of them on an ad hoc basis, and then only assuming we remember. I've been around here long enough to know that such major, fundamental sea changes in formatting policy tend to get pushed off ad infinitum. Turtle Fan 06:31, June 29, 2010 (UTC) :For the record, I'm the proponent of the POD order. I certainly have no objection to applying it across the board. TR 07:36, July 2, 2010 (UTC) ::Given how vigorous this debate has been, you may very well get your wish. Turtle Fan 17:04, July 2, 2010 (UTC) :::I have a mild preference for alphabetic but I'm comfortable with POD. ML4E 19:50, July 6, 2010 (UTC) ::Of course, we've got the problem, albeit the fairly minor one, that not everything a historical figure appears in is AH. We've got straight HF like FP and GMBML!, and we've got stories set in the future that refer back to events in the past, like Vilca or GR. Turtle Fan 17:06, July 2, 2010 (UTC) :::Historical & SF future history (and past history for time travel stories) would, in a POD ordering, come first since they have the latest departure namely zero. ML4E 19:50, July 6, 2010 (UTC) ::::So US would lead off with GR, then X-time (ooh, that's another thing, what do we do with articles with multiple X-time entries?), then Vilca, then "Elder Skelter," then whatever the most recent AH POD (I believe that's MwIH)? I dunno, shunting the major AH articles to the back doesn't sit right. HT is primarily known as an AH author, after all, and that theme is even more dominant on this Wiki thanks to our uneven coverage of stories. I believe a hypothetical non-mod reader is far more likely to be interested in an AH story's section than a future story's, and that those sections which cannot be classified as AH should follow all the AH stories. Turtle Fan 00:18, July 7, 2010 (UTC) :::That comes from a strict interpretation of POD ordering. We could go with a modified ordering having the AH first followed by the Historical / SF / Fantasy / Whatever. I take it you would order the non-AH chronologically depending on when the story takes place which presents a problem for fantasy. Whatever we decide, we would only have to apply it consistently. Good point on X-time, keeping them grouped would be best however we decided to order sub-articles. ML4E 22:18, July 7, 2010 (UTC) Category:Forum